Panel: Strong laws can help West Michigan environmental issues

Tuesday

Dec 10, 2013 at 9:17 PMDec 10, 2013 at 9:17 PM

By Andrea.Goodell@HollandSentinel.com(616) 546-4275

Most of the environmental issues facing West Michigan can be classified as “legislative,” according to a League of Women Voters panel.“We need to raise the issue strongly with the legislators because they’re going to be the ones making a decision,” said Patty Birkholz, West Michigan director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters and a former legislator herself.Birkholz was one of three panelists at Tuesday night’s “Great Michigan” Town Hall at the Herrick District Library, billed as an opportunity to hear from West Michigan environmental leaders on energy, water and land issues.She was joined by Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance President David Swan and MLCV Program Director Erica Bloom.The MLCV has three goals, Bloom said: defending Michigan’s public lands; protecting Michigan’s water from excessive withdrawals and contamination and increasing Michigan’s energy efficiency and renewable energy standard.“It’s a very long road in Lansing to get to a win,” she said. “We have to think strategic.”Swan pointed to pending legislation that would reduce requirements for biodiversity, and others that would require nonprofits to open up land to all forms of recreation, including off-road vehicles, and that the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund should pay for logging roads.Birkholz, a Saugatuck Republican, authored many environmental bills in her time in the legislature, including the energy-efficiency law, offshore wind law and renewable energy portfolio standard.“Our natural resources laws in Michigan are under attack,” she said.Michigan’s renewable energy standard says 10 percent of energy in the state should be from renewable sources by 2015.“2015 is around the corner,” Bloom said. “We don’t need to stop at 10 percent by 2015. We can get to a much higher goal.”Ultimately, it comes down to elected officials to write the laws in the first place, each panelist told the audience.“We hope people who feel strongly about it will get involved,” Birkholz said, “and let their legislators know what they think is working, what they think isn’t working.”